Mike Tharme, Continuing the Snowball.

When I began thinking about making Wildlife on Mars, I knew I wanted to make them in the form of Dinosaurs, but which Dinosaurs to choose from? The selection today ranges from Theropods, Sauropods and Ceratopsians to name a few, and of course, the non-Dinosaurs like Mammal-reptiles, Marine reptiles and Flying reptiles. I wanted to chose designs that would be iconic and recognizable to a child but different and interesting to an adult, so I created some rules to follow. ALWAYS use dated and retro prehistoric designs as a guide and take ideas from nature. Make sure to reference your peers and acknowledge their imagination. NO pure science fiction life forms, it must be within the realm of plausibility . Be realistic, you need to make an armature and animate it. This is NOT a cartoon, no talking animals or cute things. How would Ray do it? I also wanted to keep the emphasis on using dated designs of these dinosaurs as the main starting point, mainly because it kept the cha...

Until recently, my only knowledge on mould making was basic, rules such as not having undercuts to allow easy removal of a casting and using mold release. I also only had material experience with plaster and silicone, I was aware of fibreglass mould's, but I had never used it on any job or hobby project to date. I have recently discovered a material that the industry also use whilst I was employed at Telegael in Ireland, which is called Aluminium Resin (I refer to it as Alucast for short). It's stronger than plaster, but just as light as polyresin, it's virtually odorless, it can be sanded with a file or a belt sander, each casting cures in about 30-60 minutes and it can be used for silicone and foam latex casting. If you're working at home making your own stop-motion film, you can make your mold's in whatever fashion and material feels comfortable for you; However, if you are looking to work in the industry, they expect a level of skill that demonstrates...

Whilst looking for reference material for the level of sculpt detail I wanted my puppets to have I rediscovered the brand of dinosaur toys I used to own as a kid, Invicta Plastics. Invicta Plastics Tyrannosaurus Rex (1977) and Triceratops (1975) Before Jurassic Park these some of the best and highly sought after dinosaur toys in museums, I can't think of a single friend I had growing up that didn't have at least one of these toys. I also discover the person responsible for sculpting these toys was also the same person that assisted the sculpt work on Ray Harryhausen's dinosaurs for One Million years B.C and The Valley of Gwangi, Arthur Hayward. Arthur was the head of model making and taxidermy at The Natural History Museum in London. These were mostly in 1:45 scale, hard plastic models of popular dinosaurs of the time, the line ran from 1973 until around 1993.  As a child I owned the Triceratops and always sought after the T-Rex (many of my friends owned it a...

In this list are short films, music videos and commercials that I have found over the years that have added to my collective of inspiration. These are sometimes to do with their story, their visuals or even their technical level of animation. Sometimes it's not always about the big budget feature films that brings that spark to my creative influences, I'm always in awe by how script writers, animators and and to tell a story in 30 minutes or less is a challenge at the best of times for me. "Chuck Steel: Raging Balls of Steel Justice" I became aware of the work of Mike Mort back in 2000 with the airing of the series "Gogs" on the BBC channels, and for me it was a visually attractive style, with classic "Tom and Jerry" violence mixed with slightly gross, playground antics, it was brilliant. Then in 2013 I discovered Chuck Steel, this was such a step up from Gogs, the adult humor, the action sequences, the animation smoothness and the clay sc...